Recent Posts

The United States is the greatest country in the history of
everything, if you just listen to its leaders, and a disgrace
among developed countries, if you just read international
surveys. Our health care system is famously expensive and
inaccessible. Our education system is famously broken. Oh, and
our income inequality? It's just famous.

The OECD
Better Life Index, released last week, feeds the American
instinct toward both jingoism and self-deprecation. In housing
access and family wealth, it concludes that the U.S.
really is the best country in the world. But
we rank 28th among advanced nations in the category of "work-life
balance," ninth from the bottom.

This raises a thorny question: If we're so rich, why are we
working so hard that we don't even have time to cherish the
fruits of our productivity?

There are some simple reasons why the U.S. places far below
Scandinavia and other European countries among work-life metrics.
We work longer hours to make all that money. So we have less down
time. Also, we don't have national laws, like mandatory paternal
leave, that alleviate the burden on working moms.

The surprising fact is that American leisure time has actually
been increasing for most families for decades, and American men
work less today, and have more down time, than ever recorded.
Even if you consider that to be bad news (and many do), less work
should improve just about any definition of work-life balance.
Still, the most important reason why we rank barely above Mexico
is the increase in single mothers who, in the U.S., face an
extraordinary burden relative to their overseas counterparts.

Surprise: Leisure Time Is Growing (But Not For
All)
Since 1950, personal hours worked have fallen dramatically all
over the developed world, thanks to advances in overall
productivity and the shift away from certain kinds of
time-intensive manufacturing. They've fallen the most in European
countries and the least in the U.S.

But those gross averages hide the fact that the workweek has
undergone two parallel revolutions in the U.S: More paid work for
women and less paid work for men. Hours worked by moms
have doubled since
1960. Higher education attainment and the rise of the service
sector has allowed many women to trade chores for paychecks, as
this graph shows (data via Valerie Ramey).

In the meantime, men have picked up some of the slack at home. In
the 20th century, the typical working woman's week hours rose by
230 percent; in parallel, men are doing about 370 percent more
housework.

"Leisure" means different things to different people. But to
economists it means time spend not working --
either the kind that involves doing chores or the kind that
involves doing Excel. In the last century, lifelong leisure time
in the U.S. has grown significantly, due to at least three
factors: (1) the decline of the workweek, which most affected
men; (2) technology making house work more efficient, which most
affected women; and (3) people living longer in retirement, which
affected both men and women.

You might think the increase in leisure would be highest among
the rich, since nations have generally earned more leisure time
as they've become more productive. But strangely, it is the least
educated and poorest men who have seen the highest gains in
leisure. This has created what economist Eric Hurst, among
others, calls, "leisure inequality," which mirrors income
inequality. Poor working men have more leisure time than ever,
but the highest educated men have less downtime than they've had
in 50 years.

The OECD's "work-life" balance measure counts long hours, leisure
time, commuting time, satisfaction with job, and the employment
rate of mothers with school-age children. Although the U.S.
places near the bottom overall, it actually places among the top
countries in commuting time and job satisfaction. And as you can
see, we're making strides in overall leisure time as well. But
the most important category where we fall far behind other rich
countries is with mother -- especially single mothers.

The Single Mom Crisis
Women are the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of U.S.
households today. But in most of those families, women are the
primary earner because they are the only earner. One if four
houses are now led by a single mom, who earn an average income of
just $23,000.

Balancing work and leisure without a partner isn't easy no matter
where you live, but single working mothers feel a particular
pinch in the U.S., for two reasons. First, the U.S. has the
fourth-highest share of single mothers in the OED. Second, they
work the longest hours and have more children than most rich
countries, according to a study of
family time. "Lone mothers in the US have less available time
than lone mothers in any of the other countries" the researchers
studied.

Single mothers are more likely to work than the average adult --
after all, the vast majority of them
simply must -- but they're also more likely to
work less. In the U.S., where single mothers work the most, only
4 percent punch in more than 50 hours a week.

So when you hear that American work-life balance ranks poorly,
remember that there really isn't any such thing as "American
work-life balance." Instead there are intersecting trends -- only
a handful of which I've touched on here -- showing that, although
the workweek has fallen, the changing composition of families has
put tremendous time-stresses on more mothers. Overall, research
shows that lower-income men have never had more downtime, while
working single mothers have never been more common. The first
part is a problem. The second is a crisis.